The Rollcage Interview

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The busy folk at Attention to Detail talk with us about their high-flying racing phenom.

By IGN Staff

Despite being in the heat of development, the guys at ATD (Attention to Detail) were able to speak with IGNPSX about their truly awesome and upcoming racer, Rollcage. Chris Gibbs, managing director at ATD, spoke to us via email about this super-fast moving blast-the-heck-out-of-everything power demon of a game just as the ATD team heads into the final stages.

Chris: On one of our infamous game design evenings, whilst eating copious amounts of pizza, Stu and Stephen played a monster game of SEGA Rally. The whole evening then progressed to discussions of racing games ¿ especially fast ones.

As Stu (the producer) now says: "It was Stephen Bennett's (co-designer and lead programmer) and my intention from the very start of the concept stage that we would keep the player in the thick of the action for every second of the race. We wanted to make sure the excitement doesn't stop until you reach the checkered flag. This means that we wanted indestructible vehicles ¿ after all, the last thing the player needs is for his car to be destroyed just as he were jostling for the lead! Having the concept of indestructible cars opened our eyes to the destruction element...'What would happen if a huge indestructible car crashed into the side of a building?'... the rest is ¿ as they say ¿ history"

Incidentally, the flipping car idea was inspired by the remote control buggies you can get as toys. We played with it, coded up our own version, stuck it on a track and thought "WOW ¿ this feels cool !"

IGNPSX: Was a four-player option ever a consideration?

Chris: We have implemented four players on the PC version. In fact there is even a five or six-player version designed for network-play. It jostles for position at lunchtime along with Quake ¿ CTF. IGNPSX: Why wasn't it implemented?

Chris: The PlayStation doesn't have any power left to drive a four-way split screen (besides the view would be too restricted) so it's simply not feasible on this platform.

IGNPSX: The special effects in Rollcage are phenomenal. They're some of the best we've seen on the PlayStation. How is it that Rollcage can be so phenomenally good looking and run at such a high frame rate? What kind of low-level programming - if any - are you doing?

Chris: The team made the high frame rate an absolute priority from the very start of design. We always knew that without this speed we could not achieve the vision that was Rollcage. Every feature that has been coded has been done with speed in mind. The programmers have done PlayStation product before, but this time they looked at the lowest of low levels in the machine and asked themselves: 'How can we do it quicker? ¿ we've simply got to do it quicker!' A lot of the tricks are in the way we use multi-layered MIP-modeling so that all objects, including the track itself, dynamically use less and less polygons as they recede into the background. Thus there is no pop-up and no noticeable loss of speed.

IGNPSX: Which courses take advantage of the cars' flipping ability the most? In designing these courses, have you had to restrain yourselves from over-designing too many possibilities?

Chris: I don't want to spoil the surprise of some of the fun things in the tracks ¿ but it's true to say that as you progress through the leagues, the extreme nature of the tracks increases and this leads to many more occasions when you need to scale a wall, ride a ceiling, or simply land upside-down under control from a huge twisting jump.

One cool track to look out for is Daytona from the Harpoon Islands world. It has a simply huge jump, especially if you use a turbo as you take off over the brow of the hill. It's possible to catch so much air here that your car actually flips end-over-end, in mid-air, before landing and carrying on. Be careful not to land half-way through the flip or you land and start driving back the wrong way!!

We have not had to restrain ourselves ¿ we've really let ourselves go! And even so, I think our designers are just scratching the surface of what can be done with 360 degree driving and scenery destruction.

IGNPSX: Obviously, you don't feel that Rollcage overlaps with the WipeOut series. But at what point do you feel that there are too many racing games coming from Psygnosis?

Chris: As long as we continue to offer new driving experiences, we can continue to develop racers which are fresh and exciting. The huge rush of racing against an opponent, especially if it's your mate, is so fundamental that I know there will always be creative people like us trying to improve on what's gone before.

IGNPSX: How did you decide upon the design for the weapons? There are many and they're all extravagant.

Chris: The key thing about designing weapons in any game is that they are balanced. It's so important to gameplay that the player never feels too vulnerable or too all-powerful. Our weapons are specifically designed to encourage lots of head-to-head close racing. This is key to keeping the pack of cars within striking distance of each other and pushing up the adrenaline levels. For example, the worm-hole chases after the car in front of you and spits him out directly behind you; the leader missile always goes for the car in the lead; the turbos are awarded more to cars that are lagging than to ones near the front. The inspiration for the graphic look is down to the art team and their sense of theaters!

IGNPSX: Did you like Mario Kart (for the Super NES) or Mario Kart 64 (N64) much? And how much influence did these titles or similar titles influence the design of Rollcage?

Chris: The weapon/pick-up system and catch-up system are influenced by Mario Kart. SEGA rally influenced the car-handling model.

IGNPSX: What did you think of Ubi Soft's SCARS, a similar-style game?

Chris: I think it was well implemented and offered a fair bit of fun. I think that a racer needs to offer more unique features, though, if it is going to really capture the gamer's imagination.

IGNPSX: What's your opinion on designing for the PlayStation? Are you maxxing out the technical abilities with Rollcage? What technical "tricks" did you implement?

Chris: Every six months we amaze ourselves at what we get the humble PlayStation to do. In terms of pure rendering speed we have pushed things all the way they can go ¿ and a little bit more. Memory is always an issue, but even now as we're completing the game our programmers have just seen alternative ways of saving even more space, so extra features can be squeezed in.

There are lots of technical tricks and they're pretty much trade secrets for us! One thing to look out for is the motion blur option. This makes the whole screen take on a ghostly series of after-images which looks hi-res/exaggerates speed/and is a bit trippy!

IGNPSX: What's the likelihood of a sequel?

Chris: I can't comment on that at this time.

IGNPSX: What else would you like to say that hasn't already been asked or discussed?

Chris: I would personally like to say that in 10 years of running ATD, our Rollcage team has delivered the most exciting, playable and downright gorgeous game that we have ever had, and I would also say that looking behind the scenes here at ATD to our other projects in development, 'you ain't seen nothing yet!!!'

IGNPSX: Well, thanks for your time. I hope all is going well on the project and that it's a wild success.